Frequently asked questions

Daily Horoscope > Transits

What
are transits?

A birth chart shows the state of the heavens at the time and place
of birth. However, the planets move on, entering into new relationships
with the planetary positions in the birth chart all the time. The
passages of the planets over birth positions are called transits.
Interpreting transits is one of the ancient astrological forecasting
methods that can tell you which of your life's themes are likely
to become particularly important at a given time.
For example, transits of fast-moving planets often tell of opportunities,
health, moods and states of mind that pass fairly quickly. The slower
transits describe cycles of development that take much longer, learning
phases, crises, as well as periods of stability and happiness.

What
do you mean by "Transit selected for today"?

On most days, more than one planet is passing over, or transiting,
the planetary positions in your birth chart. Astrodienst chooses
the most important transit on a particular day for you to read about.
Some long-term influences can last for months. They can be the most
important things happening to you on an astrological level, but
in order to avoid repeating the same interpretation every day for
months on end, we give you the description of the other influences
as well. If you move further down the Daily Horoscope page, you
will find links to "Other transits occurring today" and
"Important long-term influences".

Why
is the list of selected transits not complete for each
day?

The short-term influences are complete for every day. If a transit
has not made it into the "long-term" list, it will only
appear on the day the transit is exact.
This list is a selection of seven to eight long-term themes, but of course
there may be more. The computer picks the most relevant ones, and
at the same time creates some variation.
The Daily Horoscope pages are single page extract from a one-year
calendar. In the printed version, you can 'scroll' back and forth
and read all the aspects, even if they are not exact on the day.
If you order the "Personal
Horoscope Calendar" or "Transits
of the Year", you can see all the information for a whole
year in one complete overview. Or, for a similar purpose, you can
subscribe to the "Extended
Daily Horoscope".
Alternatively, use the printable "Transit Calendar" in
the Extended Chart Selection
-> Special charts. It contains
all important transits over a four year period. If you use it with
a book like Robert Hand's "Planets in Transit", you
can get all the information you want.

Why
are "transits selected for today" so often transits by
the Moon?

The Moon is the fastest moving planetary body used for the transits.
Therefore it makes the most aspects to your natal planets. Other planets
such as Mercury, Venus, Mars, etc move more slowly and therefore,
it takes longer for them to get to a position where they aspect
a natal planet.
The order of speed, from fast to slow, is: Moon, Mercury, Venus,
Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
The slower the planet, the longer the influence.

How
do you determine which transit is selected for each day?

We are tipping the scales in the Personal Daily Horoscope, to weigh
and select what is most likely relevant. But we cannot simply look
for 'the most relevant' transit each day. This would result in
the appearance of the same transit reading for a long time, which
most people would find boring and silly. Therefore, for each daily
horoscope requested on our website, we always compute transits for
the whole year for this chart, find the optimal distribution for
365 day-slots and then display the particular day-slot of the requested
day.
Because we always compute transits for the complete calendar year, a
discontinuity in the list of selected transits can occur when the year changes,
between 31 December and 1 January.

Lunar transits, i.e. transits by the moving Moon, have the lowest
priority in the selection. The Moon makes its circle through your
birth chart in 27 days and repeats all transits with this frequency
- while squares, sextiles and trines happen twice within each circle.
This makes Moon transits the most frequent and the least interesting
events, and they are only used in the Daily Horoscope if nothing
better can be found for a given day. How often we have to fall back
on a Moon transit for a given chart depends on the overall distribution
of the other planets in the chart. They may be "nicely" distributed
in such a way, that their transits fill most of the 365 day-slots
we have in a given year for the Daily Horoscope. Then you will find
few Moon transits. If the other planets are distributed in a way
that they often compete for space in the same day slots, while there
remain many day-slots to which none of the more important planetary
transits can be attributed, then the program has to fall back on
Moon transits more often. On average, about 60 out of 365 day slots
are filled with Moon transits.

If for a given day there are several transits competing for the
top place in the day slot, the weight evaluation is rather complex.
The natal planet is evaluated according to its role in the chart,
the nature of the aspect is considered, and slower transiting planets
have much more weight than faster ones. But another factor is taken
into account: slower transits have a longer duration, and it does
not really matter whether you find their reading a few days earlier
or later in the Daily Horoscope - they have a long term effect anyway.
Therefore, their reading is often shifted to a day when there is
nothing else of relevance on that day. Faster transits with a short
period of relevance cannot be shifted to another day, so they either
get assigned to the current day slot or to none at all. This mechanism
often lets a faster transit win for a particular day-slot, because
the reading of the slower transit is presented on another day within
its period of relevance.

Why
does my printed Horoscope Calendar show different transits than
the online Daily Horoscope?

Transits over the Lunar Nodes are not discussed in the daily
horoscope,
because our authors have not written interpretations for these transits.
The
transits of the slow planets Jupiter to Pluto through the houses of the
natal
chart are not considered in the daily horoscope, because they last very
long,
between one year and fifty years, for each house. They would be not at the
right place in a reading which focuses on daily news.

As one of the largest astrology portals WWW.ASTRO.COM offers a lot of free features on the subject. With high-quality horoscope interpretations by the world's leading astrologers Liz Greene, Robert Hand and other authors, many free horoscopes and extensive information on astrology for beginners and professionals, www.astro.com is the first address for astrology on the web.